May Amelia and Marty McGuire are the girls who started it all. While discussing them on Twitter, our wheels began turning. What strong girls in children’s literature have we loved through the years? That discussion led to our Top Ten Girl Power lists. Our first post featured picture books and early readers, including Kate Messner’s Marty McGuire. This one focuses on middle grade books and had to start off with the other unique young woman we love for her undeniable girl power: Jennifer Holm’s May Amelia.

May Amelia from Our Only May Amelia and The Trouble with May Amelia

by Jennifer L. Holm

May Amelia is a spunky, fun, young woman who is the only girl in her family and settlement. How can you help but love a girl who declares, “I’m like the grain of sand in an oyster.”? While she may be surrounded by brothers and male neighbors, she’s definitely a spitfire who shows us how to be true to ourselves.

Jaden from Eye of the Storm

by Kate Messner

Jaden is the ultimate girl character – she’s smart, she’s a loyal friend, she’s brave, and she does what needs to be done. She joins Kate Messner’s strong, middle grade, girl power characters that we find in The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, Sugar and Ice and, most recently, Capture the Flag.

Matilda from Matilda

by Roald Dahl

Matilda may seem like just a little girl, but she shows us she can overcome anything – even despicable parents and an even more despicable and deceitful school principal – by using her mind and her determination. She also taught herself to read and loves to read and could possibly herald as the queen of Nerdy Book Club Junior which earns her a badge of awesome in and of itself.

Winnie Perry from The Winnie Years series

by Lauren Myracle

Winnie is a modern-day Margaret from Judy Blume’s beloved Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and she’s also a girl who would fit in perfectly with Ann Martin’s The Babysitter’s Club girls. The series starts when Winnie is ten and she is a role model to girl readers as she grows up and navigates being a friend, a sister, and a even a girlfriend while still being true to herself.

Amelia Earhart from Amelia Lost

by Candace Fleming

It’s been 75 years since her plane disappeared, yet Amelia Earheart still fascinates us. She loved sports, airplanes, and excitement. Whenever someone told her “no”, she found her own way to make it happen. A woman who took risks to turn her dreams into reality; Amelia is a welcome reminder that the past is filled with real women who are examples of how to soar.

Enola Holmes from The Case of the Missing Marquess and the Enola Holmes Mysteries

by Nancy Springer

Move over, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes – your little sister Enola is about to show you up. When her mother disappears on her fourteenth birthday, it’s up to Enola to figure out what happened. Her bold style and clever code breaking skills help keep her one step ahead of her older brothers. She’s clever, defiant, courageous, and certainly not a “proper young lady” of the times.

Marlee from Lions of Little Rock

by Kristin Levine

Marlee is a gifted mathematician in a time when girls just didn’t shoot for the stars. While painfully shy at the start of the book, her friendship with the new girl at school, Liz, helps her transform into a confident young woman. She becomes an example of standing up for herself, her friends, and what she believes is right.

Zita from Zita the Spacegirl and Legends of Zita the Spacegirl

by Ben Hatke

I wish Zita was my friend when I was young. She is brave, smart, loyal and will put her own life at risk and travel to another galaxy to save her best friend from an evil alien. Zita is truly a hero. She is a girl that all girls will look up to and all boys will want to be friends with.

Charlotte Doyle from The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

by Avi

Charlotte Doyle is a respectable, proper young lady on a ship from England to Massachusetts. Due to unforeseen circumstances, she’s the ONLY young lady or lady, for that matter, on the ship. Her journey takes her across the Atlantic and into adulthood. She finds her identity when she is forced into service as a sailor and then takes part in mutiny after being accused and found guilty of murder on the ship.

Isabel from Chains and the Seeds of America series

by Laurie Halse Anderson

Isabel is in a situation where most would give up. She is a slave during the Revolutionary War who is owned by a vicious loyalist and his family. But Isabel is only feigning weakness; underneath it all, she is stronger than all of those that “own” her.

Kellee Moye teaches middle school reading in Orlando, FL, Jennifer Vincent is a National Board certified teacher in Illinois, and Maria Selke is an elementary gifted resource teacher in Pennsylvania. Both Jen and Kellee blog at Teach Mentor Texts and Maria blogs at Maria’s Melange. They can all be found on Twitter as well: @kelleemoye, @mentortexts, @mselke01.

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Funny this post should come now. Lately I’ve been thinking how this seems to be the decade of the KICKA** female hero. That is most obvious in YA titles, and is predated by Lisbeth Salander, perhaps. This would be a fun list to make. {It seems a different list than “Top 10 girls power books: YA”, yeah?}

Thanks for focusing on some admirable young ladies for my sixth grade students to emulate.

As a new comics reader, I think this is something that is in the spotlight right now. There have always been kickin’ female heroes in the superhero genre, but it’s been highlighted more lately. Batgirl is rocking it. 🙂

Reblogged this on Words Read & Words Written and commented:
In a time when role models are difficult to find, here is a compilation of young ladies of lit for middle schoolers to emulate. Enjoy, and thanks for this contribution, Kellee.

Great books Kellee. I hope that teachers are making their lists from this & other places to find the books just right for girls in their classrooms. What about Callie in ‘Calpurnia Tate’? Is that too old? I thought it was a good model when I read it.

I love Callie! We had a REALLY hard time narrowing this list down to ten (there were three of us debating our choices). I think Calpurnia needs a new cover, because my students kept passing that book over when I book talked it.

Like Maria said, it was horrible narrowing down our MG list. I think we had over 25 to narrow down to 10. I’m sure Callie is awesome (though I haven’t read Calpurnia Tate) and from what I’ve read, she is definitely middle grade girl power material 🙂

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is such an amazing book. Avi provides great technical information in this historical fiction, but the story will have you moving to the edge of your seat. Danny Devito was filming this. Does anyone know what happened to that project?

Thank you for the list. Will post this to Facebook for my MS colleagues who are always scouting for strong female protagonists.

I love the inclusion of Isabel, she is the embodiment of a heroine, in my mind. Love the diversity of the group in how / where they found their passions and strength. Need to add The Lions of Little Rock to my TBR.

I like the list (especially Enola Holmes series) but how could you leave off Meg Murray from the Madeleine L’Engle time series? I would have had a very hard time making this list. Also, Menolly and Lessa from Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series? I try to steer girls to sci-fi and fantasy because there are strong heroines. Appreciate that you included nonfiction and graphic novel. They are all good choices.

and FYI, I just today found out about the Amelia Bloomer Project — to highlight feminist literature for young readers birth to age 18. http://ameliabloomer.wordpress.com/about/ It is hosted by Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association. Keep an eye out for their lists.

I started a list like this back in 2006 (I called it “cool girls of children’s literature). Suggestions poured in, and before I knew it I had a list of 200. My list hasn’t been updated in several years, and so is missing several of your choices here. But you might still enjoy it: http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/blog/coolgirls.html. The top choice on my list at the time was Anne of Green Gables, Thanks for your diverse and up to date list.

I love this list! It is so important for girls to have strong literary role models and I think you picked some great ones. As part of a digital team, I have a few titles that are being launched that focus on tween girls, magic, friendship and strong morals and I would love to get your feedback on them.
Thanks and keep up the great work.